This invention relates to the alignment of a recovered clock signal with a data signal, commonly referred to as “eye centering.” More particularly, this invention relates to eye centering on a programmable logic device.
It is almost axiomatic that digital systems are clocked. For a clock of period T, the clock signal is typically a series of square (or rectangular) pulses of durations T/2, separated by zero-amplitude intervals of durations T/2. Such a clock has a rate or frequency of 1/T. The clock is used to time data signals, with each data pulse having a duration T. However, there is no reason why consecutive data pulses need be separated by zero-amplitude intervals. Therefore, two or more (n) consecutive data pulses can be transmitted as a single continuous “high” signal of duration nT. In each clock period T, one data pulse can be transmitted. Thus, the data rate of the system is the same as that of the clock rate. In a double data rate system, data is sampled on both rising and falling clock edges, resulting in a data rate twice that of the clock rate, with each data pulse having a duration T/2.
Because any particular data pulse can be either high (“1”) or low (“0”), a train of unknown data pulses is commonly represented by two superposed waves, with the edges of the pulses are not purely vertical, so that the progression of pulses is distinctly visible. Each possible data position thus is shown as both high and low, signifying that either value is possible in a stream of actual data. Because the edges representing the pulse transitions in such a representation are not purely vertical, the intersecting inclined lines give each pulse position the appearance of an eye, and each pulse position is therefore referred to as a “data eye.”
When sampling data, it is best that the sampling occur as close as possible to the center of the data eye, as far as possible from the transitions, because sampling during a transition could provide a false reading of the data, resulting in bit errors. However, when the clock must be recovered from the data, clock recovery errors, in combination with other errors such as process and temperature variations as well as clock/data delay variations, makes centering the sampling time in the data eye—“eye centering”—difficult or unreliable.
It would be desirable to be able to provide a method and circuitry for reliable eye centering in a recovered clock application.